With an agi/crit/haste build you'll have much more Chi to spend and can use all the Chi abilities available much more frequent which is good for most current content but none of these things help with incoming direct hits that are not avoided which are so deadly on some (HC) fights. Monk armor is so shit compared to the other tanks that you have nothing to fall back on when you get a string of unavoided attacks. I'd be surprised to see this build work on fights like Sha (HC), Empress (HC) and Will (HC), atleast not with the current gear levels.

Well with Sha and Will, at the very least, the more crit provides more elusive brew procs, which means you can bank it for the predictable burst, to help with that. Same with shuffle. Empress is a bit more shaky, but there's been people here who've done it in the agi/crit/haste gear already. Biggest issue with the stamina / mastery setup is simply how much you put into mastery with such a relatively low gain. It takes 6000 rating to get an extra 5% stagger. That's not a lot, and though that adds up, especially when you're looking at multiple enemies, it's still only 5% off the initial hit, and you're still going to be taking a part of that.

Well with Sha and Will, at the very least, the more crit provides more elusive brew procs, which means you can bank it for the predictable burst, to help with that. Same with shuffle. Empress is a bit more shaky, but there's been people here who've done it in the agi/crit/haste gear already. Biggest issue with the stamina / mastery setup is simply how much you put into mastery with such a relatively low gain. It takes 6000 rating to get an extra 5% stagger. That's not a lot, and though that adds up, especially when you're looking at multiple enemies, it's still only 5% off the initial hit, and you're still going to be taking a part of that.

And to add to this, the more mastery you have, the less you will be able to purify. You actually take more damage in the long run, just less burst.

So if you keep a timer that tells you exactly when you will get PS, you could have a boss opening of PS + PS if you time the first jab within 1-2 seconds of getting the buff? for example:

19s: You jab an get extra Chi.
20s: You get PS.
21s: You jab and get extra Chi.

Yes, you can do that. Personnally i'm always trying to pull the boss this way (it works well with Crackling Jade Lightning since the first tick will give yo one Chi if you have PS, you don't need to move in range of the boss at the start of the fight), although i couldn't find an addon that can properly help me track the icd ; what i have for now is good enough when i'm in combat, but doesn't work if i don't Jab for 40 sec, hence my difficulty to pull a raid boss with the double PS thing.

Originally Posted by Noqr

No, using PS initiates a 20 second cooldown on it. Can't be used until it's done.

You are wrong, the 20 sec cooldown begins when you get the buff Power Strikes, not when you consume it. Iry's example is valid.

What exactly do you mean here? It's the other way around, you purify tons more in a mastery build.

You're absolutely right, the mastery build is to avoid burst damage. Overall damage might be higher, but ask your healers what they prefer.

cheers,
Xarmon

The less often you will be able to purify, yet your overall damage intake is higher. This may be fine in a 25 man environment, but not in a 10 man environment. What a lot of people do not realize because logs do not show it, is the amount of damage prevented from Purifying Brew. It doesn't show as healing, absorbs, dodge, nothing. I make it a rule specifically to only purify when the overall damage of stagger exceeds roughly 40% of my current health pool.

For instance: Let's say I have 500k health currently. I have a 10sec stagger where the overall damage is 200k. That is 20k per sec, not including the damage I will take that is still incoming. So the math would be:

100 / current health pool (500000) * total overall stagger damage (200000) = 40. I calculate the rough math using a tellmewhen and determine if I need to purify or not. I try and stick close to the 40% mark as much as possible. Obviously as my current health pool diminishes with subsequent hits, the overall stagger amount before purifying lowers.

Now to get back on point. With a high Mastery build, you are unable to purify as often, requiring your healers to heal that extra damage. Run comparebots with someone using an all mastery build and an all haste build and see the difference in shuffle uptime, purifying brew casts(have to manually do this in a log analyzer), damage taken, etc. I think you would be surprised.

34 Purifying Brew casts at roughly 40% of my current health pool while maintaining a 93% shuffle uptime. From a DPS standpoint, 3rd in the world. Could you manage that in an all Mastery build? Nope. Which would require harder choices from you whether or not to let Shuffle fall off to purify, or force the healers to heal through it.

It would be foolish to say that of those 34 casts was exactly 200k a pop prevented. But for simple math stake let's give a good range.

It takes 6000 rating to get an extra 5% stagger. That's not a lot, and though that adds up, especially when you're looking at multiple enemies, it's still only 5% off the initial hit, and you're still going to be taking a part of that.

That is why mastery is such a terrible stat for BrM period. If the point of stacking both stam+mastery is to improve your EH vs really heavy hitting bosses what do you get out of the mastery part of the gearing?

Stam+Mastery reforging
So 665k HP looks pretty good (2x stam trinkets included) but only getting +2.30% mastery. So at least if the fight is just vs the boss (so excluding Empress) your basically adding 15295 to your EH for short burst scenarios? Seems like the 2761 rating I'm dumping into mastery would be much better spent in Haste/Crit, especially considering the loss that reforge shows to both.

As mentioned the best approach seems to be going the normal Agil>Haste>Crit and swapping into stam meta, stam enchants (Legs, Fur lining for LW), and stam trinkets while leaving your gem/reforges alone. Swapping to stam gems (not including meta) only nets me 26880 more health at the loss of a ton of haste/crit.

The four elements, like man alone, are weak. But together they form the strong fifth element: Boron.

I hate to interfere with the conversation, but I have a level 65 tanking question:

Going to try out BrM tanking for the first time, and the guide is 85+% useful because monks have gotten all but two or three main abilities at that point ... but the one ability I won't have until 75 is Purifying Brew.

So ... how do I handle Stagger? Do I just hope that the quick fight times + overgearing low level dungeons mitigates (i.e. don't worry about it), do I limit use of BoK to stagger less, or is there something else I can be doing?

PS: I can ignore Clash until I feel more comfortable with spec, right?

You're not allowed to discuss conspiracy theories on mmo-champion, which makes me wonder what they're trying to hide.

You won't need PB before you get it. I honestly don't remember hitting red, or even yellow stagger prior to level 90 content. Don't worry about it at all is my suggestion! Don't limit BoK either, since then you'll have 20% less parry as well as the 20% less stagger, so overall you'll take a lot more damage.

And yeah, I like to think of Clash as an 'advanced' ability. I use it sometimes during raiding, but not often. You can safely leave that alone for now. That said, it feels very fun when you roll directly backwards then immediately use Clash to stun an entire trash pack. But that's something you can pick up later. :P

I hate to interfere with the conversation, but I have a level 65 tanking question:

Going to try out BrM tanking for the first time, and the guide is 85+% useful because monks have gotten all but two or three main abilities at that point ... but the one ability I won't have until 75 is Purifying Brew.

So ... how do I handle Stagger? Do I just hope that the quick fight times + overgearing low level dungeons mitigates (i.e. don't worry about it), do I limit use of BoK to stagger less, or is there something else I can be doing?

PS: I can ignore Clash until I feel more comfortable with spec, right?

Stagger helps smooth out incoming damage, so in a way it in of itself, just having it is useful for you and your healer, since your burst damage taken will be lower.

Just ride it out till you can purify it, and experiment with pulls, see where your limit is.

And yes you can ignore Clash till you're more comfortable with the core of the spec. Though really I wouldn't call it hard to learn.

My background is 99% dps, with the occasional weak stab at DK tanking. So for me, optional=ignored until I get a better fix on things (or until I ding 85, realize I hate tanking and just go back to dps fulltime ).

You're not allowed to discuss conspiracy theories on mmo-champion, which makes me wonder what they're trying to hide.

The less often you will be able to purify, yet your overall damage intake is higher. This may be fine in a 25 man environment, but not in a 10 man environment. What a lot of people do not realize because logs do not show it, is the amount of damage prevented from Purifying Brew. It doesn't show as healing, absorbs, dodge, nothing. I make it a rule specifically to only purify when the overall damage of stagger exceeds roughly 40% of my current health pool.

For instance: Let's say I have 500k health currently. I have a 10sec stagger where the overall damage is 200k. That is 20k per sec, not including the damage I will take that is still incoming. So the math would be:

100 / current health pool (500000) * total overall stagger damage (200000) = 40. I calculate the rough math using a tellmewhen and determine if I need to purify or not. I try and stick close to the 40% mark as much as possible. Obviously as my current health pool diminishes with subsequent hits, the overall stagger amount before purifying lowers.

Now to get back on point. With a high Mastery build, you are unable to purify as often, requiring your healers to heal that extra damage. Run comparebots with someone using an all mastery build and an all haste build and see the difference in shuffle uptime, purifying brew casts(have to manually do this in a log analyzer), damage taken, etc. I think you would be surprised.

34 Purifying Brew casts at roughly 40% of my current health pool while maintaining a 93% shuffle uptime. From a DPS standpoint, 3rd in the world. Could you manage that in an all Mastery build? Nope. Which would require harder choices from you whether or not to let Shuffle fall off to purify, or force the healers to heal through it.

It would be foolish to say that of those 34 casts was exactly 200k a pop prevented. But for simple math stake let's give a good range.

At best - 6.8m dmg prevented.
At worst - 3.4m dmg prevented.

Add those to your healing numbers and it is quite impressive indeed.

Much easier way to estimate how much stagger damage you cleared with purify:

This is somewhat of a rough estimate since absorbed physical damage doesn't give you stagger but is still recorded, but you didn't have a disc priest so it's close enough (the correction would mean you purified less.)

This is somewhat of a rough estimate since absorbed physical damage doesn't give you stagger but is still recorded, but you didn't have a disc priest so it's close enough (the correction would mean you purified less.)

They really need to do something to the combat log that allows purified stagger amounts (and uses) to be tracked easily.

The four elements, like man alone, are weak. But together they form the strong fifth element: Boron.

At which point would you guys recommend going from haste to crit? I currently have 5200ish haste/crit. My gems are agi/haste, agi and agi/hit. Using the spreadsheet over at EJ monk forums, inputting my stats, I get an 83% shuffle uptime with Power Strikes, and an 82.5% uptime with Ascension. I've been also using the Terror in the Mists trinket over the DMF card the past week, noticed other monks using the trinket as well. Wasn't sure if it was cause they didn't have DMF or if it was cause it's TitM is better compared to it.

5200 haste w/ Ascension is to low IMO for harder hitting/single tank fights. So you either want to stack more haste or stick to power strikes. Near 100% uptime on Shuffle is only required on single tank fights, letting it drop while your not tanking isn't the end of the world.

I believe Bottle and TitM are considered BiS for BrM. I only have LFR Bottle and Xuen is why I am using those.

The four elements, like man alone, are weak. But together they form the strong fifth element: Boron.

5200 haste w/ Ascension is to low IMO for harder hitting/single tank fights. So you either want to stack more haste or stick to power strikes. Near 100% uptime on Shuffle is only required on single tank fights, letting it drop while your not tanking isn't the end of the world.

I believe Bottle and TitM are considered BiS for BrM. I only have LFR Bottle and Xuen is why I am using those.

The spreadsheet he is using doesn't assume 100% is optimum. The number it spits out for shuffle uptime is the optimal uptime given the boss dps you indicate. That number depends on a lot of factors...but it boils down to if you would get more benefit PBing or Chi Waveing...according to its math, then you would not BoK with those chi. For all intents and purposes 100% is fine b/c it's not feasible to do all that number crunching in your head on the fly.

You have far too much hit first of all. Since you're DW you get some benefit beyond 7.5, but it's really wasted points. Exp is a bit high for my tastes as well...but to each their own. Also don't gem dodge or parry they have terrible diminishing returns in addition to costing a ton to get 1%, you're better off gemming crit or haste as they indirectly give you dodge and parry.

You have far too much hit first of all. Since you're DW you get some benefit beyond 7.5, but it's really wasted points. Exp is a bit high for my tastes as well...but to each their own. Also don't gem dodge or parry they have terrible diminishing returns in addition to costing a ton to get 1%, you're better off gemming crit or haste as they indirectly give you dodge and parry.

ah yeah i need to fix that on the gems. but im shooting for the hard exp cap but im sure i can put it elsewhere.